John Oliver Hobbes

Pearl Mary Teresa Richards (November 3, 1867 – August 13, 1906) was an Anglo-American novelist and dramatist who wrote under the pen-name of John Oliver Hobbes. Though her work fell out of print in the twentieth century, her first book Some Emotions and a Moral was a sensation in its day, selling eighty thousand copies in only a few weeks.

Quotes

• Ideals, my dear Golightly, are the root of every evil. When a man forgets his ideals he may hope for happiness, but not till then.
  • Some Emotions and a Moral (1891), pt. 1, sect. 1
  • Cf. Love of money

• Men astonish themselves far more than they astonish their friends.
  • Some Emotions and a Moral (1891), pt. 1, sect. 1

• A statesman's words, like butcher's meat, should be well weighed.
  • Robert Orange (1900), ch. 3

• We must know the measure of a man's desires before we can sound the depth of his regrets.
  • Robert Orange (1900), ch. 11

• People get to like a soul, but a satisfactory hat makes an impression at first sight.
  • Love and the Soul Hunters (1902), ch. 13

• There is no misery quite so wearing as the misery of a false position. It seems to slay the body and the soul.
  • In John Morgan Richards, The Life of John Oliver Hobbes (1911), ch. 13

• ... there was never a woman so ill-suited to public life as I am. I have had to whip myself, as it were, into society, and the loneliness of it all has been terrific.
  • In The Life of John Oliver Hobbes (1911), ch. 13

The Sinner's Comedy (1892)

• Reader. But where are the Unities?
  Author. In life there are no Unities, but three Incomprehensibles: Destiny, Man, and Woman.
  • epigraph

• He longed to make a mark, or, to express it more vulgarly, cut a figure. Now, fortunately or unfortunately, the number of figures which can be cut in the world is practically unlimited; the only difficulty is to cut precisely the kind of figure one would wish.
  • ch. 1

• He did not speak again till just before he died, when he kissed his wife’s hand with singular tenderness and called her "Elizabeth." She had been christened Augusta Frederica; but then, as the doctors explained, dying men often make these mistakes.
  • ch. 1

• "Ah," said that gentleman, ever ready to discuss one friend with another—in fact, it was chiefly for this pleasure that he made them...
  • ch. 3

• ... he fell a too ready victim to circumstances: he helped to build the altar for his own sacrifice.
  • ch. 3

• Men heap together the mistakes of their lives and create a monster which they call Destiny.
  • ch. 3

• ... love comes to man through his senses—to woman through her imagination.
  • ch. 3

• All is vanity,...discovering it—the greatest vanity.
  • ch. 3

• "A man's way of loving is so different from a woman's," sighed Anna.
  "There ain't nothing," said Mrs. Grimmage, "there ain't nothing that makes them so sulky and turns them against you so soon as saying anything like that."
  • ch. 6

• Talking to you...is only thinking to myself—made easier.
  • ch. 9

• If the gods have no sense of humour they must weep a great deal.
  • ch. 11

The Herb-Moon (1896)

• All forced virtue is degrading in its effect.
  • ch. 1

• A quart of doubt to an ounce of truth is the safest brew.
  • ch. 11

• What is beautiful is right: what is unbeautiful is wrong.
  • ch. 16

• It is our imagination, not our conscience, which makes us better than the beasts of the field.
  • ch. 16

The Ambassador (1898)

• Disappointments—like fate and love—will not bear to be too much talked about.
  • act 1, sc. 1 (loq. Gwendolene)

• Disillusions all come from within...from the failure of some dear and secret hope. The world makes no promises; we only dream it does; and when we wake, we cry!
  • act 1, sc. 1 (loq. Alice)

• ... entertainment for entertainment's sake is the most expensive form of death ...
  • act 1, sc. 1 (loq. Mrs. Dasney)

• Faults! I adore faults! I can never find too many in any creature.
  • act 1, sc. 1 (loq. St. Orbyn)

• Dearest, every man—even the most cynical—has one enthusiasm—he is earnest about some one thing; the all-round trifler does not exist. If there is a skeleton—there is also an idol in the cupboard!
  • act 2, sc. 1 (loq. St. Orbyn)

• To die for one's great ideas is glorious—and easy. The horror is to outlive them. That is our worst capability.
  • act 2, sc. 1 (loq. St. Orbyn)

• Those who have made unhappy marriages walk on stilts, while the happy ones are on a level with the crowd. No one sees 'em!
  • act 2, sc. 1 (loq. St. Oybyn)

• Women may be whole oceans deeper than we are, but they are also a whole paradise better. She may have got us out of Eden, but as a compensation she makes the earth very pleasant.
  • act 3, sc. 1 (loq. St. Orbyn)

• Marriage is like a good pie spoilt in the baking. Everything is admirable except the result! It is very heavy... very, very heavy!
  • act 3, sc. 1 (loq. Yolande)

• Lascelles: I'd rather be ruled by a liver than by love!
  St. Orbyn: A liver lasts longer!
  • act 3, sc. 1

The Wisdom of the Wise (1900)

• My dear, a man with a career can have no time to waste upon his wife or his friends—he has to devote himself wholly to his enemies!
  • act 1 (loq. Ada)

• What a man has done bores everybody, but what he is going to do is always delightful.
  • act 1 (loq. Kate)

• ... every man is practically three men. There is the man you know before he proposes: there is the man you have accepted: there is the man you have married.
  • act 1 (loq. Ada)

• If women thought less of their own souls and more about men's tempers, marriage wouldn't he what it is.
  • act 1 (loq. Wuthering)

• The wisest are those who can best adjust their disadvantages.
  • act 1 (loq. St. Asaph)

• Reason! A fool can give more reasons for his folly than a saint can urge for his wisdom. We have five senses, but only one conscience. That explains everything. The game is unequal.
  • act 2 (loq. Appleford)

• ... political reputations are made by saying what you think, and they are kept by saying what you don't think!
  • act 2 (loq. St. Asaph)

Osbern and Ursyne (1900)

•    ... I had rather sleep and eat and dance
  Than hear a nightingale any day o' the week!
  • act 1, sc. 1 (loq. Muriel)

•    ... unimaginable moments lack
  Th' appropriate language we would give to them.
  For daily talk and excellent occasions
  There is a stock of sentiments all wound
  Like skeins of wool around our tongues.
  We hold them Deliciously tinged for every use.
  • act 2, sc. 1 (loq. Osbern)

• Not all are blind that feel the scourge of love.
  • act 2, sc. 1 (loq. Osbern)

• Ah, it is silliness to pass a wolf because one is hunting foxes.
  • act 2 (loq. Alan)

• An enemy's praise heralds all treachery,
  And grows the sweeter as revenge looks surer!
  • act 3, sc. 1 (loq. Ursyne)

About

• John Oliver Hobbes,
  with your spasms and throbs,
  How does your novel grow?
  With cynical sneers
  at young Love and his tears,
  And epigrams all in a row.
  • A contemporary verse lampooning her novels. Reported in Martin Seymour-Smith, Hardy (1994), p. 477
  • Cf. "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary"

External links

• Encyclopedic article on John Oliver Hobbes on Wikipedia
• Helena Swan (ed.) Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations: English (London & New York, 1904), pp. 114, 142, 240, 287, 323, 570